{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/222r49gp5f/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Fordis, Samuel with Uri Frenkel and Samuel Kelemer"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/115/original/Boxed_Milken_Center_logo.png?1628711583","metadata":[],"provider":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/115/original/Boxed_Milken_Center_logo.png?1628711583","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/111/949/small/FordisFrenkelKelemer2.jpg?1621946594","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - L1931_MA_Oral_History_Fortis_Frenkel_Klemer_1_Fixed.mp4"]},"duration":3282.32533,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/111/949/small/FordisFrenkelKelemer2.jpg?1621946594","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-milken.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/111/949/original/L1931_MA_Oral_History_Fortis_Frenkel_Klemer_1_Fixed.mp4?1619697139","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":3282.32533,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Interview with Samuel Fordis, Uri Frenkel and Samuel Kelemer [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  All right, to my colleagues. We should come over here, because I believe that Hazzan Discount’s grave is here.\n\nFRENKEL:  Oh, I would like to see his grave.\n\nFORDIS:  Paul Discount.\n\nFRENKEL:  You know that I’m singing…\n\nFORDIS:  Nissach Ben Summah.\n\nFRENKEL:  …his U’nesaneh Tokef.\n\nFORDIS:  There’s Discount.  His Habayn Yacherle, which is, you know…\n\nFRENKEL:  His U’nesaneh Tokef.\n\nFORDIS:  …the melody is written right there, in G minor.  Plus it’s in a book.  He published a book.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=16.0,57.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  Yes, Paul was a, a great talent.\n\nFRENKEL:  Ah, he was a…\n\nFORDIS:  And a fine hazzan.\n\nFRENKEL:  He’s still, I think he wrote…\n\nFORDIS:  1952.\n\nFRENKEL:  I think he wrote a Jewish song as well.\n\nKELEMER: So you were a youngster.\n\nFORDIS:  Of course.\n\nFORDIS:  All right, gentlemen.  Hazzan Weinstock is here, Paul, Itzikel…\n\nKELEMER:  Itzikel Schiff.\n\nLAMM:  Itzikel Schiff.  Who also came to Los Angeles from…\n\nFRENKEL:  To Los Angeles from Phoenix, Arizona.\n\nFORDIS:  From Phoenix, Arizona.  Right.  Itzikel Schiff.\n\nFRENKEL:  Yes.\n\nFORDIS:  He also tried to support the Yiddish papers.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=57.0,86.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FRENKEL:  For 30 years.  And he came to Phoenix, and listened to me daven a Pesach — a Passover — and he brought new work for a trial, ‘cause he was going to retire, and after Shabbes Sunday morning, we made a contract.\n\nLEVIN:  Yes, he was 50 when he died.\n\nFRENKEL:  I do not remember.\n\nFORDIS:  Yes.  He was 50 years old.\n\nKELEMER:  Do you remember Plotkin?\n\nFRENKEL:  Plotkin?  Of course.  Plotkin never failed to send me a New Year’s card.\n\nFORDIS:  Oh, Daniel Plotkin?  Of course.\n\nFORDIS:  Plotkin was also a businessman.\n\nFRENKEL:  He was a…\n\nLEVIN:  What was his business?\n\nKELEMER:  Pocketbooks. Ladies pocketbooks.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=86.0,117.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FRENKEL:  He was…\n\nKELEMER:  But interesting, that Ancis, whom I knew, I met him when I did the High Holy Days in Los Angeles.\n\nFORDIS:  Yeah, Dan, Dan lived in Palm Springs in last years.\n\nKELEMER:  Yeah.  Yeah.\n\nFORDIS:  He was 95 years old.\n\nKELEMER:  And he was always dark and black.\n\nFORDIS:  Yes.  Yes.\n\nLEVIN:  He sat in the sun?\n\nFRENKEL:  What about his Raboney Shel Shalom for Sefires?\n\nFORDIS:  For Solomon Ancis?\n\nFRENKEL:  Yes.\n\nFORDIS:  Oh, my goodness.  Ancis also did the Slichas service.  Ancis the Slichas service.\n\nKELEMER:  He was a ish anav — he was a very humble man.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=117.0,143.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FRENKEL:  Yes, he was.  I was very sorry that that I did not…\n\nKELEMER:  And by the way, I visited him…\n\nFORDIS:  Do you have a record, by the way, of Daniel Plotkin?\n\nKELEMER:  He made a record…\n\nFORDIS:  Yes.\n\nKELEMER:  I have it.\n\nFRENKEL:  I have it somewhere.\n\nFORDIS:  Do you?\n\nFRENKEL:  But not over there.\n\nKELEMER:  But you know, his last days, he spent, it was called The House in Duarte, but now it’s The City of Hope.\n\nFORDIS:  Ah, yes.  Yeah.  Well, you know, each year, when we hazzanim used to get together as a Cantors’ Ensemble, we used to sing Ancis’, you know, some of his, the psalms that he set to music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=143.0,175.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KELEMER:  I brought something, a little music of his that I still have.\n\nFRENKEL:  His melodies were gorgeous.  His melodies were gorgeous.\n\nKELEMER:  Yes.  But his great work, may I tell you, was his, is the Organ Prelude for Hanukkah.  Do you have it?\n\nLEVIN:  Yes.\n\nKELEMER:  Oh, my goodness.  Here is Colgan.\n\nLEVIN:  Here’s Colgan.\n\nKELEMER:  Ah, Hyman Wohl, the President.\n\nFORDIS:  Henry Wohl, yes, he was the President of the, of the Cantors, the Orthodox Cantors…\n\nFRENKEL:  He had a mouth on him like nobody else.\n\nKELEMER:  Yeah.\n\nFORDIS:  He, he was a man of great dignity.\n\nFRENKEL:  With an iron fist.\n\nFORDIS:  I remember the way he would stand.  He would stand there so erect and, and he was…\n\nKELEMER:  But he was also a pioneer here.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=175.0,209.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  …when he spoke to you….  Yeah.  He was.\n\nKELEMER:  Yes. And the President of the Cantors, because…\n\nKELEMER:  Yes, yes, yes.\n\nFRENKEL:  He had a mind…\n\nFORDIS:  He was a no-nonsense person.  And Hazzan Lippitz, Aaron Lippitz, I heard him when I was a teenager…\n\nFRENKEL:  His son sung with me in…\n\nFORDIS:  I heard him…\n\nKELEMER:  But listen to what Uri says.  Uri says — because I knew Lippitz in New York.  Uri says he was from New York.\n\nFRENKEL:  He was from New York.\n\nKELEMER:  Lippitz.\n\nFORDIS:  He had a brother who was also a hazzan.\n\nFRENKEL:  And he came over here.\n\nKELEMER:  Yes.\n\nFRENKEL:  And then his son, Murray Lippitz, sung in my choir…\n\nFORDIS:  He sang in your choir, I know, yes.\n\nKELEMER:  And also he was the President of the Cantors’… the Jewish Cantors’ Association for a while.\n\nFRENKEL:  For a while.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=209.0,241.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  Yes, he passed away very young.\n\nLAMM:  Let’s go down this way here.\n\nFORDIS:  He had, I heard him in the Breed Street Synagogue, during the heydays of the Breed Street…\n\nKELEMER:  Here?  No, you wouldn’t send cantors here.  Would you find cantors here?\n\nFRENKEL:  Yeah, but we can go in.\n\nLAMM:  Right down this way.\n\nKELEMER:  Are there some more?\n\nFRENKEL:  We can turn left.\n\nFORDIS:  All right.\n\nLAMM:  Keep going, Sam.  Go down two more.\n\nFORDIS:  Oh, here is, here’s Hazzan Shvartzkin.\n\nKELEMER:  Yeah.\n\nFORDIS:  Oh, my goodness gracious.\n\nKELEMER:  And his wife, his wife.\n\nFORDIS:  You have, you have a photo of Hazzan Shvartzkin…\n\nFRENKEL:  Do you know that Shvartzkin… Sam, Shvartzkin was Hazzan in Lumkach?\n\nFORDIS:  I didn’t know that.\n\nFRENKEL:  In Pressborg.\n\nFORDIS:  I see.\n\nFRENKEL:  And in Lumkach.\n\nFORDIS:  He was a fine menagdim.\n\nFRENKEL::  Ah…\n\nFORDIS:  And here’s Hazzan Skolnik.  Oh, my goodness.\n\nFRENKEL:  Ah.\n\nFORDIS:  Skolnik, oh, my goodness.\n\nLAMM:  You started out, was this a known place?  A cemetery known for the Hazzanishe Farband?\n\nKELEMER:  In those years.\n\nLAMM:  In those years.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=241.0,284.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  You see, when we, when I came to Los Angeles in 19, September of 1934, I, we lived just a mile from here.  So I knew what, I knew what was here.  And then, when I, when I joined the Hazzanim Farband, I realized that so many of our cantors who are now residing here….\n\nFRENKEL:  They called themselves Minister Cantors.\n\nFORDIS:  Yeah.\n\nFRENKEL:  Jewish Minister Cantors.\n\nLAMM:  Let’s, let’s move on this way.\n\nFORDIS:  This was the section that they had set aside for these…\n\nFRENKEL:  Well, you can’t compare it to New York.\n\nKELEMER:  I’m not comparing it to New York.\n\nFORDIS:  Now, I did not know him.  Of course, I heard of Paul Discount.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=284.0,317.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FRENKEL:  I couldn’t believe in New York.\n\nFORDIS:  I did not know his brother, Bernard, but apparently, this is a relative, because they used some musical notes here.  Paul Discount was, died in 1952, Bernard in ’63.  So, Minnie, Paul Discount’s wife, Minnie, died in, ten years after.  She died in 1962.\n\nLAMM:  I’ll tell you something.  I met this guy.\n\nFORDIS:  Did you really?\n\nLAMM:  Yes.  He came to Adat Ariel once.  I remember meeting this man.\n\nFORDIS:  I see.\n\nLAMM: Cause Paul Discount was the hazzan there before Alan Michaelson.  Julie Blackman and then Discount.\n\nFORDIS:  Yeah.  Well, I, I can tell you later about that, because I was his choir director.  Paul Discount’s choir director.  I’ll tell you about that a little later.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=317.0,359.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KELEMER:  He has the history.  He was a pioneer.\n\nFORDIS:  And Talmadge.  Oh, my goodness.  I heard Talmadge, they called, pronounced it “Talmadge.”  I heard him at Breed Street Synagogue.  Very fine hazzan.\n\nKELEMER:  That’s true.  But he left Breed Street — remember?  He left Breed Street.\n\nFORDIS:  Very fine.  Yes, he left there.  He had a son who was also a cantor, Talmadge.\n\nLAMM:  Yeah, but besides the Breed Street Shul in those years, where was — in Sinai?\n\nKELEMER:  Sinai.  Beth Israel.  No, no.  Winechas was, when he went away from…\n\nLAMM:  On Vermont?\n\nKELEMER:  Yeah.  What was it called?  The Jewish Institute?\n\nFORDIS:  Yes.  It was the Jewish Institute, yes.\n\nKELEMER:  Jewish Institute.\n\nFORDIS:  Which later became Shaarei Tefila.\n\nKELEMER:  Shaarei Tefila.\n\nFORDIS:  And Shaarei Tefila, the building of Shaarei Tefila, was actually taken from Temple Israel in Hollywood, and they supplanted that on, on Beverly Boulevard.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=359.0,402.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LAMM:  Another question.  There was a Hazzan Silverman — not Sol — who was the cantor of Sinai Temple before…\n\nKELEMER:  Yes.\n\nFORDIS:  Yes, yes.\n\nLAMM:  …and he moved to Phoenix, I think.\n\nFRENKEL:  Yes.\n\nLAMM:  Was he a good hazzan?\n\nKELEMER:  Of course.\n\nFORDIS:  Now, here is somebody that we missed completely.  Cantor Morris Marshall, olev hasholem.  Cantor Marshall was the hazzan at Temple Beth Am.\n\nKELEMER:  Oh, yes.\n\nFORDIS:  I knew him very well.\n\nKELEMER:  Yes, yes.\n\nFRENKEL:  That was before my time.  Before…\n\nFORDIS:  Before either, before anybody’s time.\n\nKELEMER:  Before Salkild, before…\n\nFORDIS:  Yes.  Yes.  He was, I was a teenager.  He had a baritone voice, and he invited me to, to do a few services there at, at that temple.  It was then called The Olympic Jewish Center.\n\nKELEMER:  That’s right.\n\nLAMM:  And interesting.  ‘Cause this is the only, the only matzevah I see that has a hamaforsahm as well.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=402.0,455.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  Uh huh.  That’s true.  Let’s see what else we have here.\n\nLAMM:  You know what’s interesting?  When you start looking at life expectancies, and when these gentlemen were born, you see that most of them, except for a very few, lived a very long life.\n\nKELEMER:  Because they were hazzanim.\n\nLAMM:  Because they were hazzanim.\n\nKELEMER:  And they had no problems with bala batim.\n\nFORDIS:  Well, I knew a, Hazzan Shvartzkin was 91 years old when he died.  I knew him when he was in his 80s — that’s when I first met him.  And he was a menagdim — he really knew music.\n\nFRENKEL:  I just saw him here.  He was hazzan in Czechoslovakia, you know.\n\nFORDIS:  Yes.\n\nFRENKEL:  And I still met him and…\n\nFORDIS:  I did know that, yes.\n\nFRENKEL:  …and I still met him when I came to Los Angeles.  He was a beautiful man.\n\nFORDIS:  Yes.  I wonder if, I wonder if Hazzan Canter is buried here?  Do you remember Hazzan Canter?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=455.0,505.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FRENKEL:  He made a funeral.\n\nFORDIS:  Where was…\n\nKELEMER:  From Cleveland?\n\nFORDIS:  Yeah, yeah.\n\nLAMM:  That was interesting.  His son, Edward Canter, who is a doctor, a voice doctor.  He was 43 years the hazzan in Park Synagogue.\n\nKELEMER:  Park Synagogue.  I knew him.  I knew him.\n\nGOLE:  Hazzan Canter — Cantor Canter.\n\nKELEMER:  Cantor Canter.\n\nFORDIS:  The joke about — in a friendly way — the joke about Hazzan Canter was that when he once made a havdalah here in Los Angeles, he started with a high C and then went up.  I’ll never forget that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=505.0,536.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LAMM:  Not unlike Reverend Joe Levitz, huh?\n\nFRENKEL:  No, Berele was unique.\n\nKELEMER:  No, we don’t know about Reverend Joe Levitz.\n\nFORDIS:  I didn’t know him.  1950.\n\nFRENKEL:  Nobody ever heard of him.  Where was he hazzan?\n\nKELEMER:  It doesn’t say.\n\nFORDIS:  I’d like to say something on account of what, Paul Discount.  My folks came to the United States to Kansas City, Missouri, and I was born a few months after they arrived here, in… as a matter of fact, they, their formal — well, they were married in, in Kansas City, and Hazzan Morris Forester, who later became my instructor, my hazzanic instructor, married them.  He did the….  My father sang in his choir, in Kansas City, and he also sang tenor soloist in Hazzan Paul Discount’s choir in Kansas City, Missouri.  And that’s….","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=536.0,588.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS: All right.  Now, let’s now go, go forward a few years.  At the Valley Jewish Community Center, which later, of course, as we know it know, Adat Ariel in the Valley, in North Hollywood, Hazzan Julius Blackman was the hazzan.  Now, for some strange reason, every time the Yamim Noraim — the High Holy Days — came around, he got laryngitis.\n\nThis one year, Paul Discount was his choral director.  Paul, Paul was up in years now.  He was a fine musician, as you know.  He was the choral director.  And I came out there to help him out.  My father introduced me to him, because they knew each other from Kansas City.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=588.0,631.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS: Julie Blackman got laryngitis, and they begged Hazzan Discount to daven.  And he said to me, “Sam, you take over the choir.”  I conducted the choir, and he davenned.\n\nI want to tell you something — at that time of his life, he didn’t have the glantz in his voice.\n\nFRENKEL:  In quantity, yeah.\n\nFORDIS:  He didn’t.  But he had the nishoma.  He davenned with such kavonna.  He davenned so beautifully that he had me in tears.  And the congregation went wild for him.  Now, this was practically without a voice.\n\nSubsequent to that, of course, most of us use his music.  I’ve used his Unetaneh Tokef prayer for the last 41 years, every year.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=631.0,676.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"GOLE:  His Hineni, his Hineni was very popular.\n\nFORDIS:  His Hineni, oh yes.  Yes.\n\nGOLE:  Even the Chatzimote and stuff that he… for the holidays.\n\nFRENKEL:  I’ve never seen his…\n\nKELEMER:  How about his Sefira?  His Sefira?\n\nLAMM:  You’re thinking of Allman.\n\nLEVIN:  You’re thinking of Allman.\n\nFORDIS:  Allman I think you’re thinking.  Yes, yes, indeed.\n\nLEVIN:  Where was he born?  Do you know?\n\nFORDIS:  Discount?  I have no idea.\n\nLEVIN:  Was he American?  No, he couldn’t be American…\n\nFORDIS:  No, no.  He was born in Europe.\n\nGOLE:  I heard he had done some work for the studios.  Is that true?\n\nFORDIS:  He did a little work…\n\nLEVIN:  Yes.\n\nFORDIS:  He did a little work for them, yes.  He did some orchestrations, did some choral work for the studios.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=676.0,702.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"GOLE:  So then what happened?  So then Julie left Adat Ariel, the VJCC?\n\nFORDIS:  Yeah.  But Paul, Paul never took over.  Paul was then too ill, and there was another hazzan.  You showed me a picture of him today, and I’m trying to think of his — Kenari.  Hazzan Kenari (?).\n\nKELEMER:  I thought Kenari was in Las Vegas.\n\nFORDIS:  As a matter of fact…\n\nFRENKEL:  Him I met.\n\nFORDIS:  …we cantors, if you recall, we cantors, I directed a Cantors Ensemble of about 30 cantors…\n\nFRENKEL:  Yah, yah.\n\nFORDIS:  …in Las Vegas at the synagogue.  And during the rehearsal, Hazzan Kenari fell, on the bima, during the rehearsal, and I gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have the magic thing.  He died right there.  Hazzan Kenari.  He was a lovely man.\n\nKELEMER:  Yeah.\n\nFORDIS:  And he was the hazzan…\n\nKELEMER:  A gentleman.\n\nFRENKEL:  He was a very gentle man.\n\nFORDIS:  Yes, a very gentle man.  On the bima.  On the bima.\n\nLEVIN:  Like, Schorr, Schorr, Baruch Schorr.\n\nFORDIS:  That’s correct.\n\nLEVIN:  That was during a rehearsal, that Sam probably overdid.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=702.0,751.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  As a matter of fact, matter of fact, it was during Hallelujah — Lewandowsky’s Hallelujah.  He reached for the high note, and that did it.\n\nLAMM:  So Discount, now was he, amongst the hazzanim at that time, was he considered to be, did he have an ear for music?  Did he write other things, besides what he published?\n\nKELEMER:  Uri says there’s a Yiddish song…\n\nFORDIS:  Oh, he had so much.\n\nFRENKEL:  He had a few songs.\n\nLEVIN:  Where is all his… where are these?\n\nFORDIS:  We don’t know, because you see, Minnie had the music, and who knows what she did with the music.  We don’t know.\n\nLEVIN:  Minnie, Minnie was his wife.\n\nFORDIS:  Yeah.\n\nFRENKEL:  Shmulick, you had some music from him.\n\nFORDIS:  Minnie died ten years later.\n\nKELEMER:  They’re probably in boxes, but I must have some.\n\nLEVIN:  You have?\n\nLAMM:  But here in Los Angeles, I would say that his legacy in Los Angeles, most of us, I mean, say in town, his Unetaneh Tokef, because of the Kevakarat ro’eh edro is, is exquisite, his —\n\nFRENKEL:  He’s the most popular…\n\nLAMM:  …it’s beautiful.  He…\n\nLEVIN:  Even now?\n\nLAMM:  Even now, even now.\n\nFORDIS:  Oh, sure.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=751.0,801.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  You use it, Joe?\n\nGOLE:  I don’t use it, no.  But I remember, but when I started out, I used a tremendous amount of his music.  His Hineni, his Haben yakir li.\n\nLAMM:  And wait a second.  And many of us used it specifically because at Adat Ariel, or Valley Jewish Community Center and Temple, that’s where he, at the latter part of his life, he was at, he conducted there.  And then Michaelson came, I think in ’53 or ’54, to, to Valley Jewish Community Center…\n\nFORDIS:  Michaelson came in ’52.\n\nLAMM:  ’52.  Right when he died.  And Alan really loved his music, and specifically, the Haben yakir li.  It started with V’al Yadei Avdekha.  The Haben yakir li was just… and it was very, very, very lovely.\n\nLEVIN:  You’re talking about this one that's on the stone here?\n\nLAMM:  Yes.  It starts at the V’al Yadei Avdekha, and it’s a very nice piece of, of hazzanas.\n\nFORDIS:  Now, you’ll notice, Neil, that (sings) Haben… the next note is wrong.\n\nLEVIN:  That’s right.  It should be B-flat.\n\nFORDIS:  That’s right, that’s right.  That’s correct.\n\nLAMM:  So anyway…\n\nFORDIS:  All of us noted that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=801.0,854.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LAMM:  So Neil, what happened, so this, so his music was used by Michaelson.  Michaelson was the teacher of probably at least 60 or 70% of the hazzanim who went into the Conservative movement, who didn’t go the Seminary, here in Los Angeles.  And he would give us, he would, as Alan would say, “I’m going to edit.”  And it would mean he would change or edit, and he edited the Hineni, so that it was accessible, and it was very, very, very lovely, actually.  Then Alan, then Alan decided he would use the beginning of the Yiddishe lead Hineni, and then, then you went into Discount’s somewhere along the line.  And you had a combination.  But that became popular.\n\nUnetaneh tokef, it chorally, it is absolutely, it’s really exquisite.  And some of the other stuff is, is great in it.  And that’s why it became popular here.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=854.0,895.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"GOLE:  Well, it’s melodic, and it’s, it’s accessible.  It’s easy, it’s what you could teach an amateur choir, it’s very easy music, and it’s, and it’s…\n\nLAMM:  And it’s exciting.  The endings are exciting.\n\nFRENKEL:  But the beginning singers, the people know, right away.  (Sings)  Unesanetokef…\n\nFORDIS:  That’s pretty.  A-minor.\n\nFRENKEL:  It makes them sit down and listen.\n\nLAMM:  And the bass solo, the bass, the bass solo is fantastic.\n\nFORDIS:  There’s one more thing about Hazzan Discount that we haven’t discussed, and that is, his nature.  He was, he was possessed of a very positive nature.  And I never heard the man say one bad word against anybody.  As a matter of fact, he was a very supportive person for, for hazzanim and for composers, and so on.  He was very knowledgeable, musically.  He really was.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=895.0,950.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Let me ask you — did he, did they have any children?\n\nFORDIS:  Oh, yes.\n\nKELEMER:  He’s interested in the music.\n\nLEVIN:  I’m, that’s right.  I’m interested to find out where, because a book like that, that’s — is that, that’s the only book he published in a book form?\n\nFORDIS:  Yes.\n\nLEVIN:  So that usually represents a tenth, maybe, or maybe less, of someone’s output.  The question is, are there heirs?  I mean, living here in Los Angeles?\n\nFORDIS:  I will do a little research and let you know.  I will.\n\nLEVIN:  But they did have children.\n\nFORDIS:  Yes.\n\nGOLE:  Or ask Minnie.\n\nFRENKEL:  Itzikel Schiff was his very best friend.\n\nLEVIN:  Who?\n\nFRENKEL:  Itzikel Schiff.\n\nFORDIS:  Yeah.\n\nLEVIN:  Who’s right here.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=950.0,984.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FRENKEL:  Right here.\n\nFORDIS:  That’s right.\n\nLEVIN:  Right over here, to your right.\n\nFORDIS:  Itzikel Schiff — right here, two over, three over.\n\nFRENKEL:  He brought me from Phoenix, Arizona to listen to…\n\nFORDIS:  Ah.  There, there is an interesting man.  I think we should, we ought to discuss him.\n\nLAMM:  Uri, this is Hazzan Schiff here, this is, this gentleman brought you to Los Angeles.\n\nFRENKEL:  It was in Judea Congregation, there was a man by the name of Mattisau, who traveled around with furniture.  And he came to Phoenix, Arizona, and he heard me daven.  He went back home and he said to Itzikel Schiff, “I want you to go — forget about davenning Pesach.  I want you to go to Phoenix, Arizona.  Pretend that you are no hazzan.  And go to listen to this young man.”\n\nAnd all of a sudden, the rabbi announces, “I would like to welcome a cantor from Los Angeles, Itzikel Schiff.  He’s very well known.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=984.0,1045.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  Who came there incognito.\n\nLAMM:  Who’s here, who’s here incognito.\n\nFRENKEL:  Anyway, after davenning, the hazzan, I ran down and looked for him, and I found him.  I said, “Would you come to the seder in my house?”  He came — I, we lived in a hotel.  He came.\n\nAfter the seder, he says to me, “Hazzan, I didn’t come here because of my sickness.  I came here because they told me that there is a hazzan, Uri FRENKEL, I should listen to.”\n\nAnd finally, came in the morning, he listened to me.  I invite him to lunch again.  All of a sudden, he brings a book.  Such a thick book of music.  And he says, “Do you read music?”  “Yes, a little bit.  Not too much.”  So he says, “Are, are you sure that nisht a zay ve de veondera hazzanim that say they read and they don’t read?”  And I said, “You know what?  After Shabbes, after Yontiff, you sing something, and I will write it down.  And will that convince you that I read music?”  He says yes.\n\nBut meanwhile, let me open the book.  My composition, which I know you don’t know.  And you never heard.  And he puts the music down and I sing it with the words together.  He says, “Now, I believe you that you read music.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1045.0,1136.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FRENKEL:  And he invited me to come for Shabbes, and I davenned Shabbes morning, and Sunday morning, I had a contract.\n\nFORDIS:  All right, now, now we’ll take this, this story a little bit further.  At that time, I was hazzan on Olympic Boulevard, at Temple Beth Zion, and I heard there was a new hazzan coming in, because Itzikel Schiff told me.\n\nBy the way, Itzikel was really, that was not his name.  His name was Yitzhak.  But you can imagine, everybody knew him as Itzikel, in the same way that everybody knew Yossele Rosenblatt, Joseph Rosenblatt as Yossele.  That’s an endearing, you know, endearing thing.\n\nFRENKEL:  Spiritual.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1136.0,1174.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  He told me, Itzikel told me, that I must hear this hazzan, Uri Frenkel.  I got through with my service very early, and I dashed over to your synagogue and heard you.\n\nAfter the service, I introduced myself to you.  You wouldn’t let me go.  You grabbed me and took me home with you.  And I ate there, and from that moment on, you and I were life confidantes.\n\nKELEMER:  We all did, yes.\n\nFORDIS:  We all ate… and Shari, Shari made the most marvelous food.\n\nKELEMER:  And I remember Itzikel the night we davenned Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur out by Marcus, we davenned.  He was a dear friend.  I loved him because he loved Yiddish, and he represented the Jewish press, the Yiddish press from New York.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1174.0,1217.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FRENKEL:  He wrote the Kantlernen.\n\nKELEMER:  Yes, yes.\n\nFRENKEL:  He was knowledgeable.\n\nKELEMER:  But his voice, remember…\n\nFRENKEL:  That was the problem.\n\nFORDIS:  Well, he was a stutterer.  It was an amazing thing — he would say to you, “Uri, da-da-da-…”, but when he sang — no stuttering.  They had to teach him to sing.\n\nKELEMER:  No stuttering.\n\nFRENKEL:  His angina killed him.  One nice day, they had to take him to the hospital, and there he died.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1217.0,1246.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"GOLE:  Yeah.  Yeah.  So do you still have his music?\n\nFRENKEL:  Me?  No.  No, I don’t.  His wife gave it away to her son.  He became a clarinetist, and he wanted to keep his father’s…\n\nKELEMER:  He also loved humor, Yiddish humor.\n\nFRENKEL:  Oh, yeah.\n\nLAMM:  He was a good raconteur?\n\nFORDIS:  Oh, yes.  Oh, that’s something… oh, yes.\n\nFRENKEL:  And the game of poker.\n\nFORDIS:  I don’t know about that side of him.\n\nFRENKEL:  He used to…\n\nFORDIS:  I never lost money to him.\n\nLAMM:  Shall we move this way?  \n\nLEVIN: Who is this? Cantor Daniel Plotkin.\n\nFRENKEL:  This is Daniel Plotkin, the poker partner from Itzikel Schiff.  Absolutely.\n\nFORDIS:  I remember Daniel Plotkin.\n\nLEVIN:  You knew him?\n\nFRENKEL:  Oh, yes.  I knew him very well.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1246.0,1288.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FRENKEL:  Daniel Plotkin wanted to be a hazzan in the worst way.  I mean, a really outstanding hazzan.  Unfortunately, well, it didn’t work out that way.  But he loved hazzanas, and whenever Leibele Glantz — ‘cause I sang with Leibele Glantz for over three years in his choir, all-male choir — and Daniel Plotkin was there at every service.  He lived a very full life.  He was 95.\n\nKELEMER:  He lived in Palm Springs.\n\nFORDIS:  And yes, he lived in Palm Springs for the last part of his life.  And he was, he was a man with, with a very positive attitude toward people and toward life.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1288.0,1323.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KELEMER:  He was a mechne surech.\n\nFRENKEL:  A very good friend.\n\nKELEMER:  Yes, he was.  He was…\n\nLAMM:  Exactly.  I remember, Sam, you brought us over to his house in Palm Springs.\n\nFORDIS:  Yeah, yeah.\n\nLAMM:  And he always had a nice tan.  I remember he was a tall man.\n\nKELEMER:  He always had a nice tan, yes.\n\nLAMM:  And very, very shtarker.\n\nKELEMER:  But his, his, look — he was a good businessman.\n\nFORDIS:  It’s interesting.  It’s interesting.  Yes, it’s interesting that he would write this, that it would be on his Matsayva.  “The old gray-haired cantor had no fear.  He knew his time was near.  He left and higher posts embraced, where no one is replaced.”\n\nKELEMER:  Probably by him.\n\nFORDIS:  This is, this is undoubtedly by him — it’s his style.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1323.0,1353.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KELEMER:  Yes.  We have to write it up.\n\nFORDIS:  Because he would send, he would send cards — High Holy Day, you know, High Holy Day cards and always have a little poem that he sent to me.\n\nKELEMER:  We have to write that down.\n\nFORDIS:  Yeah.\n\nLEVIN:  He was born in Europe, too, I’m sure.\n\nFORDIS:  Yeah, yeah.\n\nKELEMER:  But he’s lucky…\n\nFRENKEL:  But he didn’t have a head on his shoulders.\n\nKELEMER:  …in those days, a good businessman.\n\nLEVIN:  Exactly.\n\nKELEMER:  And he had.\n\nLEVIN:  He was kind of simpatico with you, kind of a kindred spirit, Sam, would you say so?\n\nFRENKEL:  Oh, you had to like him the minute you meet him.\n\nKELEMER:  But we are also standing near Solomon Ancis.\n\nFORDIS:  Oh, Solomon Ancis.  A very good talent.  That was a real talent.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1353.0,1380.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LAMM: You have to wait for the Hezbit, if you want to hear it, Sam.  You have to wait for the Hezbit.\n\nFORDIS:  Can you imagine what they’re going to say about me?  Oh, my God.  Oh, some day.\n\nLAMM:  I want to say some day…\n\nFORDIS:  They’ll stay by me and say, and I’m going to hear things I wouldn’t believe.\n\nLAMM:  Sam, I’m going to say, I want to be the first person to say a nice word about Sam.  I may be the last, but I’m going to be first.\n\nKELEMER:  And we’re all singing Glantz, flat.  Flat.  Flats.  In flats.\n\nLAMM:  Because you, we’re going to imitate you, Sam.  When you, look at me, Sam.\n\nFORDIS:  How about, how about G-flat major?  Try that one time.\n\nLAMM:  Sam, we’re going to imitate you.\n\nFORDIS:  No, no.  It’s the wrong place.  He’s got it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1380.0,1421.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LAMM:  And I once came to watch you daven one Friday night.  Schulweis used the word draconian.  And Shmillich said, in a big voice, Shmillich goes, “What does that word mean?”  And Sam said, “It came from the shors drech.”\n\nFORDIS:  Oh, my goodness.  Oh, my goodness.\n\nLAMM:  We’re not rolling right now.\n\nKELEMER:  Now, wait a second.\n\nLAMM:  Now, wait a second.  And Sam was singing, and he was singing and Sam always looking up.\n\nFORDIS:  Yes.\n\nLAMM:  He was looking up.  So Joe and I kept looking, what’s in the back in the synagogue keeps looking up there for?  And I remember he did the kiddish one time, and he went, in fact I think he went to a high G on the HaShabbat, and bingo! — you spilled the wine all over you.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1421.0,1461.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KELEMER:  I’ll tell you a story about him with, with the…\n\nFORDIS:  Are those things that I’m going to hear when I die?\n\nLAMM:  No, no, no.  We’re going to say… we’re going to talk about your desk in Valley Beth Shalom.\n\nFORDIS:  Forget it.  Let’s discuss Hazzan Solomon Ancis.\n\nLAMM:  Okay.\n\nFORDIS:  Ancis…\n\nGOLE:  I want to start by saying that I use a tremendous amount of his music, TTBB.  I use his Yizkor service in its entirety.  And of course, his Hashkiveinu that he did — it was beautiful.  But there are a number of things he’s done TTBB, L’Dor Va’Dor, and so forth. And, unfortunately, I don’t know if there’s any more music around that maybe one of you have \n\nKELEMER: I have some.\n\nGOLE: You have some things that were never published?\n\nKELEMER: No, I have here one example.\n\nLEVIN:  Did any of you ever meet Ancis?\n\nKELEMER:  I knew, I knew him.\n\nFRENKEL:  Never had the pleasure.\n\nKELEMER:  I knew him.  I’m going back more than 40 years.  He came to me with, I’ve never met a man with ish anav — so humble.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1461.0,1524.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FRENKEL:  Humble.\n\nKELEMER:  Never knew what a great person he is.  And then, his last days were spent at Duarte.  It was a…\n\nLEVIN:  City of Hope.\n\nKELEMER:  No, the City of Hope was later.  That was the, with the tuberculosis…\n\nGOLE:  Tuberculosis.\n\nLEVIN:  Yeah.\n\nKELEMER:  And I met him.  And I saw him.  And I was a youngster, but I had such respect for the man — the way he spoke.  And I didn’t realize who he was, till later on, I asked about him.\n\nFORDIS:  Well, Shmulik, if you recall, whenever we had, the Cantors had to sing something, particularly for a Lavaya, or a memorial service, we always used Ancis, because he was the only one writing for tenors and basses.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1524.0,1561.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  That’s what I want to ask you.  There were very few, very few composers who wrote for TTBB.\n\nFORDIS:  Yes.\n\nLEVIN:  Zilbertz is one, and then only in America.\n\nKELEMER:  Zilbertz, Zilbertz, Zilbertz.\n\nLEVIN:  Only in America, because of the Farband, of course.  And Ancis — I’m curious to find out why.\n\nKELEMER:  Probably by their background, women voices.\n\nLEVIN:  No, but they all wrote for boys.  This is unusual, and Ancis was very well…\n\nKELEMER:  Yes.  You say that he wrote for boys sometimes?\n\nLEVIN:  No, he didn’t.  He wrote a lot of music for, for TTBB.\n\nKELEMER:  That’s right.\n\nLEVIN:  And there is, there are a lot of manuscripts around.  But I mean, do you know, for example, where did he came from, before he came to California?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1561.0,1595.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KELEMER:  May I say this?  It seems to me, he came from, from Germany.  I don’t know.  But I’m remembering.\n\nFRENKEL:  It’s not a German name.\n\nFORDIS:  Well, that doesn’t matter.\n\nLEVIN:  You can’t go by that.\n\nFORDIS:  Can’t go by that.\n\nLEVIN:  I don’t know.\n\nFORDIS:  And…\n\nKELEMER:  By the way, there’s still people who would know.  We have to go to them.\n\nLEVIN:  Who would know?\n\nFORDIS:  You can tell from his writing and his harmonizations and his voice, that he, that he had, he had a classical background.\n\nGOLE:  Classical background.\n\nLEVIN:  No question.\n\nFORDIS:  And, and you know, one would, one would imagine, if he came from Europe, that he would have come from Vienna or something like that.\n\nLEVIN:  Something like that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1595.0,1626.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LAMM:  By the way, the TTBB thing, was, in certain communities, it was no longer, there was no more Meshorrerim, and it was hard to mobilize boys, and they began the TTBB, especially when they became professionalized.\n\nLEVIN:  But very few wrote that way.  They just adapted it.\n\nFORDIS:  That’s true.\n\nFRENKEL:  In Vienna…\n\nLEVIN:  In terms of original comp-, originally composing for TTBB, very, very few.  And this is one of, one of the, and not only one of the few people — one of the best.  And I’m, I’m wondering who here would know whatever happened to his family.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1626.0,1655.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  That’s very difficult.\n\nFRENKEL:  In Vienna, you cannot sing anything else.\n\nKELEMER:  Now, I mentioned his organ, the Hanukkah organ.  Do you know it?\n\nLEVIN:  No.\n\nKELEMER:  Ach!  By the way, he was referred to, that saying, the Jewish Bach.  You understand what I mean.  The one…\n\nLAMM:  Him or Nabakovsky?\n\nKELEMER:  No.\n\nFORDIS:  Well…\n\nLEVIN:  Nabakovsky’s a different…\n\nFORDIS:  No, Nabakovsky was referred to as the Jewish Bach.\n\nLAMM:  Absolutely.\n\nLEVIN:  In Europe.  But you’re talking about over here.\n\nFORDIS:  Yeah.  Yeah.  One of the composers — a wonderful hazzan, of course — Leibele Glantz.  Leibele wrote — because I sang in his men’s chorus, for the, at the synagogue — he wrote TTBB.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1655.0,1696.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Because he had, well, we know why — because he had a men’s chorus.\n\nFORDIS:  Sure.\n\nLEVIN:  There’s always a specific reason why.  However, in Ancis…\n\nFORDIS:  However, there was material that Ben Pollock, who was the conductor, gave us, that was SATB, and we tried to sing it.  It didn’t come out well.\n\nLEVIN:  It doesn’t come out.  You gotta rework it, you gotta revoice it.\n\nFORDIS:  Yeah.\n\nLEVIN:  But who would, do you think there’s anybody around who would…\n\nFORDIS:  I’m sure, I’m sure…\n\nLEVIN:  We tried to find out…\n\nFORDIS:  There’s a possibility that the University of Judaism may have something in their music library of Ancis’.  They may have it, yes.  It’s worth looking into.\n\nLAMM:  They may have it in boxes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1696.0,1725.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KELEMER:  You know who would know?  Who may know?  You know?  Somebody that did research in the Jewish Anglo press, Rabbi Kramer, was here a long time.\n\nFORDIS:  Oh, yes.\n\nKELEMER:  He may know, because of his Historical Society.  His name was mentioned, it was all over the news.  But he was an ish anav.\n\nLAMM:  Shall we mosey on down the line?\n\nKELEMER: Zichrono levracha.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1725.0,1746.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  All right, gentlemen.  I would just like to point something out.  Hazzan Hyman, Chaim Kogan, who was the President, for many years, of the Farband, the Orthodox cantorate, in Los Angeles, was a, was a man who was dedicated to hazzanas.\n\nMy recollection of what it was that he, along with so many, many others of the, who belonged to that organization, did not have permanent positions.  They were, they were cantors who had positions for the High Holy Days.  Once in a while, if they, if they chose, they would daven, perhaps, in the synagogue, for, for Pesach or Shavuot, and so on.  But they did not hold permanent positions.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1746.0,1788.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  One of their reasons I, I felt that they did not hold positions was that they all refused to teach bar mitzvah.  That was something that they absolutely refused to do, and they told me so.  Because when I joined the organization, I was a young man, and I joined the organization, because I wanted to belong to a cantors’ group, and the Cantors’ Assembly had not established itself yet here in Los Angeles.  I said that I’m going, I took a position where I do teach b’nai mitzvah.  And they looked down at me, looked down upon me, and they said, “You’re ruining hazzanas.”  That was the answer — “You’re going to ruin hazzanas.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1788.0,1824.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  And I pointed out to them that there are synagogues today, particularly — there weren’t many permanent positions in the Orthodox — I said, the future is going to be in the, in the Conservative and in the Reform.  I said, now I, I tend toward the Conservative, and consequently, I know what they’re asking for.  They all want the cantor to do more duties.  They want him on a full-time basis.  And if we follow that, if we decide we want to follow those dictates, then we can have a life as a hazzan, a respected life, and where we will be compensated accordingly.  And that’s what happened.\n\nBut these men, these men just held onto the old and, and they disappeared.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1824.0,1867.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  The Farband was formed when, in Los Angeles?  At the turn of the century?\n\nFORDIS:  Oh, my gosh, that goes back to the ‘20s.  At least the ‘20s, that I know of.\n\nLEVIN:  Because in New York, the, the Farband was, well, it’s going to be a hundred…\n\nFORDIS:  Well, that’s, that’s quite old.\n\nLAMM:  You know, there’s the Jewish community of Los Angeles in, but before 1920, Sinai Temple was 190-what, Joe?\n\nGOLE:  1909, I think.\n\nLAMM:  1909, or something around there.  Wilshire Boulevard Temple, which was B’nai B’rith, which owns this cemetery, they’re about, they were close to…\n\nGOLE:  1886, I think, something like that.\n\nLAMM:  Yeah, they’re over a hundred years old.  But that was Reform — they still don’t have a cantor.  So the, the…\n\nKELEMER:  Besides, they do have a cantor.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1867.0,1903.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LAMM:  Historically, the cantorate really didn’t begin in this city until the ‘20s, until the large migration of Jews.  There was always a Jewish community here, even in the days of the cowboys and Indians, there were, the Levi-Strauss family from San Francisco, which pre-dates there.  San Francisco has a lot of Portuguese, Spanish-Portuguese Jews.  A lot of Sephardim.\n\nBut so, until the ‘20s, I think, if I remember correctly, my grandparents came here in 1923, I think, to Los Angeles.  And they moved to, in the Adams area — they did not move to Boyle Heights.  Adams area.  A little south here and towards the USC downtown area.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1903.0,1939.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  That’s right.  The Adams area was, was a step above Boyle Heights.  At that time.  Yes.\n\nLAMM:  At the time.  And then, and then they built City Terrace, and Boyle Heights was also a step up.\n\nFORDIS:  Oh, yes, oh, yes.\n\nLAMM:  And they moved there, and there was, and there was the Breed Street Shul, there was the Menorah Center, there was another…\n\nKELEMER:  The Jewish Institute.\n\nLAMM:  The Jewish Institute.  And there weren’t hazzanim there.\n\nKELEMER:  Beth Israel started, too — Beth Israel.\n\nLAMM:  We talked about Discount.  Adat Ariel, or Valley Jewish Community Center and Temple, really wasn’t, didn’t start to begin to grow.  The Valley, that was the first, that was the first synagogue in the Valley, and now…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1939.0,1970.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"GOLE:  Was that 1947 or 1945?\n\nLAMM:  Yeah, ’47.  So nobody lived there.  And so, you talk about the Farband — this was, our Breed Street Shul, which began in its heyday in the, especially in the ‘20s and the ‘30s and in the, by ’47 or ’48, Jews left this area of town.  And I think I’ve mentioned it before — there were 100,000 Jews in this part of town in 1947.  And, and Max Vorspan, Dr. Vorspan, in his book, The History of the Jewish Community in Los Angeles…\n\nFORDIS:  You really don’t mean in this part of town.  You’re talking about…\n\nLAMM:  Two, three miles up.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1970.0,1997.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  You’re talking about Boyle Heights.\n\nLAMM:  Four miles up.  Boyle Heights.  Four or five, six miles up from here.\n\nFORDIS:  Yeah.\n\nLAMM:  They left.  By 1952, there were 10,000 Jews left of 100,000 Jews in this part of town, and the migration went to Fairfax.  That’s when the heyday of Beth Am, which moved from Olympic Boulevard to La Cienega…\n\nKELEMER:  Judea.\n\nLAMM:  Judea, where Uri was the hazzan.\n\nFORDIS:  No, Beth Am was in that location.  It was called the Olympic Jewish Center.\n\nKELEMER:  Olympic Jewish Center.\n\nLAMM:  Exactly.\n\nFORDIS:  And then it was renamed Beth Am.\n\nLAMM:  But then…\n\nFORDIS:  When Rabbi…\n\nLAMM:  But didn’t the synagogue that Sam was at for many years, Valley Beth Sholom, that was 1954 or ’56, it began.  So the Farband didn’t really have a stronghold here.  The…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=1997.0,2031.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"GOLE:  Let me ask you…\n\nLAMM:  One second.  When Joe and I really started off with the, in the Cantors’ Assembly, which was 19, about 1969 or 1970, we started trying to, you know, to get involved, the Cantors’ Assembly, I think, was 15 years, it was about the, it was almost 20 years old.  But that was the organization that kind of took over.  And Sam is very correct is saying that the future of, of hazzanas in Los Angeles, except for a very few, like Sam’s brother Berele, and what have you, the Conservative movement, and, really was the place that the great hazzanim were in.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2031.0,2062.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  You know, one of the, one of the cantors whom we haven’t mentioned yet, who was a member of the Farband, was Hazzan Aaron Tishkovsky.  Aaron Tishkovsky was a very creative, he was a rather strange man.  But he, he was, was an inspired musician.  That is, he could create melodies.  And he had all kinds of people who made arrangements with him — Morris Goldman, and he had Alfred, Dr. Alfred…\n\nFRENKEL:  Sendry.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2062.0,2093.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  Sendry, and others who would make, make their own.  He was referred to — I’ll never forget this, there was a music critic by the name of C. Sharpless, years ago, and this man wrote about, he had an interview with Aaron Tishkovsky.  And he said, “This man is the Jewish Schubert.”\n\nNow, Sharpless was not a, not, he was not an inexperienced man — he was a musical person.  He felt that this, that this — first of all, Aaron Tishkovsky probably created over 500 songs.  And I’m not just talking about liturgical.\n\nLEVIN:  Yiddish?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2093.0,2126.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  I’m talking about Yiddish, and I’m talking about Hebrew, but songs.\n\nKELEMER:  Yiddish.  His Zmires.\n\nLEVIN:  Where are they now?\n\nKELEMER:  We have some.\n\nFORDIS:  We have a little bit of it.  In fact, now he was the nephew of the great Hazzan Roitman.  He was a nephew of Roitman.  This was Aaron Tishkovsky.  And I knew him quite well.\n\nGOLE:  Could we talk, could we talk just briefly, because a little bit of the history of Sinai Temple was Leibele Glantz, and although he’s not interned here, let’s talk just about your experiences with him, because you were around when he was at Sinai Temple.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2126.0,2159.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  Oh, yes.\n\nGOLE:  And he was in the Conservative synagogue.\n\nFORDIS:  Well, no, no, no.  No, no.\n\nGOLE:  He was also Shari…\n\nFORDIS:  I was with him at Shaarei Tefila.  Yeah.  ‘Cause when he was at Sinai Temple, I was in the Air Corps.\n\nGOLE:  Was he involved in the Farband?  Was he, was he active in the…\n\nFORDIS:  Well, he attended meetings, but you know something?  They never could get him to sing in the chorus when they had cantorial chorus concerts.  He never would sing with them.  I never understood that about him.\n\nFRENKEL:  If you knew him, it wasn’t difficult to understand.\n\nFORDIS:  Well, all right.\n\nFRENKEL:  He was an individualist.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2159.0,2190.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS: This man, this man was a very proud man.  A man of, of great erudition.  One of the most creative hazzanim that I have ever heard in my life, and I spent nearly three years studying him.\n\nI asked him at one point — I was a young man, and I asked him if I could study with him.  And he gave me a price, and he says, “You’ll have to pay me in advance,” and it came to thousands of dollars, which I didn’t have.  So I said to myself, I’ll study with him, but I’ll study with him by really observing him.  And which I did.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2190.0,2224.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS: I want to tell you a couple of experiences I had at Shaarei Tefila.  We had a magnificent men’s chorus of eight men.  Top, top voices.  We had — our first tenors both had high Ds — solid high Ds.  So there was a great deal that we as a chorus could do, you see.  And we, we did things musically, too.\n\nAnyway, I’ll never forget one Pesach.  Glantz came in the, it was in the Hallel, and he took one of these psalms from the Hallel, and for about 12 minutes, dwelt on that Hallel.  I will never forget this as long as I live, because I became utterly speechless.  And the conductor, Ben Pollock, had to bring us in when he finished, we had to go right into the next, next tehillim.  And he gives the downbeat, and nothing happens.  So Ben, in his hoarse voice, “Mmmm!  Mmmm!”  He’s singing.  And we were laughing as can be.  But, but we were all paralyzed from, from what that man did, musically, vocally, and spiritually.  It was an experience that I have rarely had.\n\nI’ve always admired him.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2224.0,2300.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LAMM:  But besides you, Sam, Ben Pollock was also, he also worked for the studios, and did arrangements for the studios, orchestrations, I think.  Is that correct?\n\nFORDIS:  Uh…\n\nLAMM:  David Silverstein, we did a, we did a…\n\nFORDIS:  He did some choral work for them.\n\nLAMM:  …retrospective on him.\n\nFORDIS:  He did some choral work.\n\nKELEMER:  But Glantz was an individual in every sense of the word.  His hazzanas.\n\nFRENKEL:  Oh, yes.\n\nKELEMER:  He was also a mystic, kabbalah, and he was Chabad, he knew Chabad.  And he davenned in Tuftin Avenue Shul in Brownsville one Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  And you had to see the man daven, not listen to him.\n\nI’ll tell you later, because I spoke, if you remember, we had a memorial when he passed away.  And I was the main speaker.  And you were involved, too.  And I spoke about him later, I’ll tell you what.\n\nHe was an individual, and he fought, he liked, and he respected knowledge.  Knowledge.  He was a good Hebraist.  He wrote beautifully, he spoke beautifully, and he also was from the Yiddish Farband.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2300.0,2357.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FORDIS:  He was from the Histadrut.  Histadrut.  He was very active in Histadrut.  And he knew all of the top people in politics in Israel.\n\nKELEMER:  Do you have, do you…\n\nLEVIN:  Sure.  About the Farband, now.  I mean, you were, you were all three at one time members of the Hazzanim Farband here?\n\nKELEMER:  He was.\n\nFORDIS:  Well, I was.\n\nLEVIN:  You were.\n\nKELEMER:  And my brother, Berele.\n\nLEVIN:  And Berele.  You weren’t.\n\nFRENKEL:  I was.\n\nLEVIN:  And you were.  Now, what happened…\n\nFRENKEL:  For a little time.\n\nLEVIN:  What happened, unlike in New York, where the Farband is technically and legally still in existence, even though…\n\nKELEMER:  They have the charter.\n\nLEVIN:  Yeah.  No, they have meetings.  They actually have…\n\nKELEMER:  They exist.\n\nLEVIN:  They exist.\n\nFRENKEL:  The charter is the Jewish Ministers…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2357.0,2396.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Ministers Cantors’ Association.  But in Los Angeles, it’s completely non-existent.  Am I correct?\n\nKELEMER:  No, no.  Don’t say that.\n\nFORDIS:  No.\n\nLAMM:  Shner.\n\nFORDIS:  That’s a couple of, Rabinovich?\n\nKELEMER:  I think there still…\n\nLEVIN:  That’s the Cantorial Council of America.\n\nLEVIN:  No, that’s the Cantorial Council of America.  I’m talking about the Hazzanim Farband — the Jewish Ministers.  Are they…\n\nKELEMER:  One moment.  We have to ask Cantor Rabinovich.  Because they died out.\n\nFORDIS:  That’s true.\n\nKELEMER:  But there’s a semblance of cantors who still remember.\n\nLEVIN:  Remember.  But what I’m talking about is the organization is dissolved.  It looks like.  Does anybody know?\n\nFRENKEL:  Not officially.\n\nGOLE:  No one dissolved it.\n\nFRENKEL:  It don’t exist.\n\nFORDIS:  It just don’t exist.\n\nLEVIN:  Well, the question is this — I mean, when you say it doesn’t exist, organizations, even, even such as this, had assets, for example.  I, I’m not going to quote you a figure, but I know exactly what the assets are of the, of the organization in New York, and it’s quite substantial.  So they have to be distributed to somebody if they dissolve, or there has to be a bank account.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2396.0,2450.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KELEMER:  I don’t think that was taken care legally yet.\n\nLEVIN:  It should be looked into.\n\nFORDIS:  You know, I, I think, it can be looked into.  I think what the status really is one, the organization has been ignored.  That’s just about where it is.\n\nFRENKEL:  By the organization.\n\nKELEMER: Yeah.\n\nLAMM:  But you know what?  Times change.\n\nFORDIS:  I think it still exists, but it’s been ignored.\n\nLAMM:  And when the Cantors’ Assembly and the American Congress of Cantors and the Cantorial Council of America came into being, they were all affiliated with specific schools and movements…\n\nKELEMER:  Movements.\n\nLAMM:  And the Farband, which was never affiliated with a movement, went by the wayside.\n\nLEVIN:  But I’m talking about, what might have happened…\n\nFRENKEL:  You will see in the journal that the author has given out.\n\nLEVIN:  The Jubilee volume.\n\nFRENKEL:  The Jubilee volume.  You will see the names that are here.\n\nLAMM:  But I’m talking about the Cantorial Council.\n\nLEVIN:  We were talking about Tishkovsky.  Did he, he, you say he wrote 4 or 500 songs, and so forth.  You have some, you have some…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2450.0,2511.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FRENKEL:  That’s Tishkofsky.\n\nKELEMER:  Yeah, he wrote a lot.\n\nFRENKEL:  And, when I came to Los Angeles, I have no choir, I didn’t know what they really wanted.  I didn’t even know what kind of choirs they had.  I mean, I was a choir person, but when I conducted myself, I arranged it myself.  And he comes to me one day and he says…\n\nLEVIN:  Are we talking about Skolnik?\n\nFRENKEL:  …before the holidays — Skolnik, yeah.  Came to me, “Hazzan FRENKEL, mein nomen ist Skolnik.  I provide choirs.  If you want, gladly, for a certain amount of money, I will bring you a quartet, and you will enjoy it.  Schiff always had a quartet.  I can do the same thing for you.”\n\nWell, I wasn’t too enthusiastic, ‘cause I didn’t know what the synagogue wants.  But then he brought me to a rehearsal.  And I listened to the rehearsal.  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good, either.\n\nSo I didn’t know which to choose, the good or the bad.\n\nSo I went to him and I said, “What about giving me the people?  A tenor, a bass, a baritone and so forth.”  “That I don’t do.”  But he don’t do, and we had a administrator by the name of Leo Windner.\n\nKELEMER:  Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2511.0,2593.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FRENKEL:  Do you remember him?\n\nKELEMER:  I remember him.\n\nFRENKEL:  Leo Windner?  He knew all the singers in town.  He called them up and they brought me four singers.  TTBB.  And I made a quartet by myself.  And believe me, they were very, very happy.\n\nBut one day, Magnin, the Rabbi Magnin, I have every year a memorial service.  They had him in a pulpit, a stage, and Shmulik, I mean Skolnik — excuse me — Skolnik came down with a quartet.  And one day, he says, “Rabbi Magnin would like you.  Itzikel Schiff is no more.  He would like you to make the memorial service with my quartet.”\n\nAnd I did it for a few years, till I realized that Rabbi Magnin, olav hasholem, used to take advantage too much.  So I decided I don’t want to have to do anything with him.\n\nBut he had his own music, he had his own arrangements, and he had a very, very amicable quartet.\n\nKELEMER:  He was active.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2593.0,2664.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/65","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Where did he come from?\n\nFRENKEL:  That I don’t know.\n\nGOLE:  Did he have a, did he have a pulpit at any point?\n\nFRENKEL:  No, he was a conductor.\n\nGOLE:  Just a conductor.\n\nFRENKEL:  Choir.  A freelance.  That’s…\n\nKELEMER:  He davenned with the hazzanim in Breed Street Shul.  They came down for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.\n\nFRENKEL:  Yah?\n\nKELEMER:  And…\n\nFRENKEL:  He provided them with quartets.\n\nLEVIN:  So it was similar, for example, in New York, to people like Sterner and Julius Mandel.\n\nFRENKEL:  Oh, yes.  Sterner, yah.\n\nGOLE:  But he was not the only name.\n\nLEVIN:  Were there other choir masters?\n\nKELEMER:  I didn’t think, I didn’t think he had yingelech.\n\nFRENKEL:  Of course they wouldn’t.\n\nLEVIN:  No, no boys here?\n\nKELEMER:  No, no boys.  I think he had…\n\nGOLE:  Just the men here.\n\nLEVIN:  What other choirs…\n\nFRENKEL:  He did not have yingeleh.\n\nLEVIN:  Oh.\n\nFRENKEL:  No.\n\nLAMM:  Ben Pollock was in the choir.\n\nFORDIS:  Ben Pollock.\n\nFRENKEL:  Sterner.  Sterner had yingeleh.\n\nLAMM:  Yes.\n\nLEVIN:  Ben Pollock had, had Chicago.  Who else was here, like when you were, you know, even when you were a child?  But certainly before that, I mean, who were some of the choir directors here?\n\nKELEMER:  As a child, I was a visitor.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2664.0,2720.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/66","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  No, I was talking to Joe here.\n\nGOLE:  What I remember, what I remember that still has an impact on me, when we were growing up, you had already had the Cantorial Ensemble, and there were, it was very active.  You used to do a concert once a year at Hollywood High School.  I mean, there was always…\n\nFRENKEL:  You mean, the Ensemble.\n\nGOLE:  The Ensemble.  The Ensemble started out.  And that started up what?  Back in the ‘60s, would you say?\n\nFRENKEL:  Oh, we had it for years.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2720.0,2741.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/67","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LAMM:  When Joe and I were growing up already, by that time, the Conservative movement and Reform movement had, in its full bloom, and so you didn’t need itinerant choirs, because each place had its own choir.  You had it, they had the choir, adult choir, it had junior choir.  And…\n\nLEVIN:  But before that.  Before that, let’s say, you know… before the ‘50s, even.  Because obviously, he did, that’s what we’re talking about here.\n\nLAMM:  Well, I was trying to tell you before.  And then before the ‘50s, the Jewish community primarily was a few miles from here, in a small section, like the Lower East Side of New York was the Boyle Heights area.\n\nKELEMER:  Fairfax.\n\nLAMM:  Fair, no, no, not Fairfax.\n\nKELEMER:  No, no, I say it was like Fairfax.\n\nLAMM:  Boyle Heights.  And there were a few synagogues there — the Breed Street Shul being the…\n\nFORDIS:  Major one.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2741.0,2780.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/68","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LAMM:  …major one.  The first, the Conservative Synagogue, Sinai, was a little bit, was at that time, was West, was…\n\nKELEMER:  Jacob Cohen.\n\nLAMM:  And that was already, that was just, that was still downtown.  And those were the only places.  So you didn’t have much, and there were a few choir directors, and that’s how it worked.  There wasn’t, synagogues here didn’t have choirs.\n\nLEVIN:  So Skolnik was one of the few, in other words.\n\nLAMM:  One of the few.\n\nFRENKEL:  And he was very active.  Very active.  And he was very, very aggressive.  He went to the congregation and he said, “I can provide you with a quartet for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, for Slichas, for Pesach,” and he used to succeed.\n\nLAMM:  If you can fathom that in 1948, there were 100,000 Jews in Los Angeles, and then we grew, by 1960, to almost a half a million, you can understand the, the impact of what the migration was to California in general.\n\nKELEMER:  It was the Valley only, the Valley.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2780.0,2828.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/69","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LAMM:  The Valley.  The Valley became, there is now almost two million people that live in San Fernando Valley alone…\n\nKELEMER:  And they’re going, they’re going further.\n\nLAMM:  They’re going further.  And so, but you have, that’s what happened.  And the choirs developed.  So these, these, the Farband people, and these type of itinerant conductors became…\n\nGOLE:  Obsolete.\n\nLAMM:  Obsolete.\n\nLEVIN:  By the way, the Farband…\n\nKELEMER:  When he speaks for Farband, he always says Hazzanim Farband.\n\nLEVIN:  Hazzanim Farband.  There were many Farbands.  Of course, Farband simply means association.\n\nFRENKEL:  The Yiddish Cantorial…\n\nLEVIN:  Yeah, the Communisten Farband — there’s a million Farbands.  But we’re assuming that we’re talking, we’re talking about hazzanim here, we’re….\n\nDid the Farband have a chorus here?  A Hazzanim Farband Chor like they had…\n\nKELEMER:  According to Sam, he said Glantz didn’t see him, and so they must have had some semblance.\n\nFRENKEL:  Not my time.\n\nKELEMER:  Some.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2828.0,2872.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/70","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Because I’m wondering who conducted it.\n\nFRENKEL:  In my time they did not have.  If it was a question of a conducting, it was Sammy Fordis or Pollock.\n\nLEVIN:  Wouldn’t be Pollock.\n\nFRENKEL:  There was one more.\n\nLAMM:  Did Goldman ever conduct them?  And we have a few people to mention — Maurice Goldman.\n\nFRENKEL:  Yes.  Maurice Goldman.\n\nLEVIN:  Oh, yes.\n\nGOLE:  Well, we never talked about Maurice; we never talked about Max Helfmann, we, we…\n\nLEVIN:  But that’s a later, that we’re going to talk about another time.  All right, we’re going to, let’s move over to Berele’s.\n\nFRENKEL:  I can tell you, the minute I arrived here to Los Angeles, not a soul knew me, except my family.  And the first guest in my home — strangers — was his brother, olav hasholem.  And it sinssent habat gavayzen, I found out who he is, and what, and since then, we were very, very close friends.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2872.0,2918.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/71","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FRENKEL:  And of course, through him, I went to Miami Beach, and I met his brother, who made me a nice caboles spornim, without knowing or ever hearing me.  He was wonderful.\n\nAnd Koussevitzky came, Sholem Katz came, and he made them a welcome, and I was beinaihem, and I’m very proud of that.\n\nKELEMER:  That was in Florida.\n\nFRENKEL:  And he was… yeah.\n\nKELEMER:  Yeah, that was in Florida.\n\nFRENKEL:  He was a nishomeh, and I’m sure he sits next to God.\n\nKELEMER:  He’s yitzkeit.  That’s what he was about.\n\nFRENKEL:  He’s za yitzkeit.  Together with his wife.\n\nKELEMER:  By the way, you were in my father and mother’s house…\n\nFRENKEL:  Of course.  Before I went away.\n\nKELEMER:  Yeah, at the open house.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2918.0,2965.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/72","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FRENKEL:  I went to the house of his father.\n\nKELEMER:  But Berele made his mark wherever he was.\n\nFRENKEL:  He gave me his address, I went up the stairs — they had steps that went to the house.  A white tablecloth, a bottle of wine, with a por kikhilach in a, in a plate.\n\nKELEMER:  Everyone came.\n\nFRENKEL:  Ubich, “Mein nomen ist FRENKEL.”  “Yo mein zuneich mir getzach fen nayach — I know you, benalla batim.”\n\nKELEMER:  But Berele as a hazzan made his mark — he was wonderful.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2965.0,2993.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/73","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"FRENKEL:  Ah, yes.\n\nKELEMER:  He had what I call tefilles melavev.  Tefillah.  He knew what tefillah is.  And he poured his heart and soul into it.  And he created for himself more than a name, but a loving person.  A loving person.\n\nFRENKEL:  He cheated me out of one thing, but I’ve never been angry at him.  He invited me to share a chuppe in a movie, and the last minute, he took his brother, because he had a bigger voice.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=2993.0,3023.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/74","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KELEMER:  And he says… well, that’s another story.\n\nLEVIN:  Tell it.\n\nGOLE:  It’s a great story.  It’s a great story.\n\nFRENKEL:  We’d have a marvelous movie from it.\n\nLEVIN:  What’s the movie?\n\nKELEMER:  “I Love You, Alice B. Toklas” with Peter Sellers.\n\nGOLE: And there’s a scene with two cantors…\n\nKELEMER:  He was, he was afraid all week long that it will run into Shabbes.  And I had a contract where if a, after twelve o’clock, they had to pay us double.  A I didn’t tell him, and they didn’t tell him.  He went to the director, he says, by eleven o’clock, he must finish.  Because of Shabbes.  But he, the way he was exposed to it in his remarks.\n\nFRENKEL:  He was loved everywhere.  Wherever he went.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=3023.0,3064.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/75","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LAMM:  He had a sweet face.  I met Berele Kelemer, I was, I think, 19 years old, and I had a week, just a weekend pulpit. So I mean, I had the first opportunity to hear him on the second day of Rosh Hashanah.  And I sat there in the balcony, and there was no mekhitza at the time at Shaarei Tefila, and all of a sudden, he started with Hineni.  And I said, I thought to myself, boy, he’s in a very, very high key.  He’s never going to make it.  He started off, I thought he was in the climax of the piece.  And he started going.  And he started going — I had never heard anything like that.  And by the time he got into the, to the repetition of the Amidah, I was spellbound.  He just, his nishoma was pouring out of him, and I never quite heard anybody who, there were, the pictures he was making with the words, you could tell that to him, every word was important.\n\nAnd I went up to him afterwards, and I was in awe.  I mean, I thought, gee, my voice is three octaves below this guy.  I just, I couldn’t believe the, the beauty of his voice, and he, from the time he started till the time he ended, there was no change in his voice.  He was…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=3064.0,3128.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/76","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KELEMER:  Kept going.\n\nLAMM:  And I went up to him, I said, “Hazzan KELEMER,” I said, “your, your voice.”  He didn’t make nothing of it; he didn’t think anything of his voice.  It was like, it didn’t, the voice was unimportant.\n\nSo he looked at me, he says, “Who do you study with?”  I said it was Hazzan Michaelson.  “Oh, he’s a fine hazzan.  Very nice.  Do you have a place to go eat?”  I said, “Yes,” I said, “I’m here with my…” — the first thing he asked me — “Do you have a place to go eat?”  I said, “I could come to both places.  I’ll eat there and I’ll come to you.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=3128.0,3150.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/77","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KELEMER:  And also, he had to run away from Russian during the pogroms, and he went to the yeshivas in Poland.  He was very learned.  Very, very learned.\n\nLAMM:  How many smichas did he have?\n\nKELEMER:  I’ll tell you, in some hazzanas.  He asked me for another one, another one, another one.  He was a humble, very humble, very…\n\nGOLE:  He had a very sweet face.\n\nKELEMER:  Sweet face.  And good, was a good Jew.  But it stuck him, what he did was stuck.\n\nBy the way, we spoke about the Farband Hazzanim.  He was very active.  And lately, he was the secretary.  That’s why I have, but I’ll tell you if I’ll find it, the records and books of the meetings and a lot of names.\n\nLEVIN:  That’s exactly what we’re talking about.  You know, you just reminded me.\n\nKELEMER:  A lot, a lot of names.\n\nLEVIN:  It’s not, it’s the, the minutes.\n\nKELEMER:  Yeah.\n\nLEVIN:  Did they take the minutes in Yiddish here?\n\nKELEMER:  I’m sure.\n\nFRENKEL:  No, they took minutes.\n\nLEVIN:  In Yiddish or in English?\n\nFRENKEL:  No, no davke.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=3150.0,3205.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949/transcript/35951/annotation/78","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Because in New York, they took them in Yiddish up to…\n\nKELEMER:  But it wasn’t in Esperanto.\n\nLAMM:  One thing I think also should be said about Berele was that, a lot can be said about a person when their children respect them and honor them.  And he, he and his wife produced…\n\nKELEMER:  Rebecca.\n\nLAMM:  Rebecca, produced two Rabbinim, both of great stature.  His two boys loved him.\n\nKELEMER:  Very learned.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40286/file/111949#t=3205.0,3282.32533"}]}]}]}